1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments described herein are directed to a method for transmitting load balancing in mixed speed environments such as during physical interface speed changes and client flow speed changes. Specifically, a load balancing association, a main flow redirector, and a channel assignment module are implemented.
2. Related Art
Traffic load-balancing algorithms are necessary for providing an equal share of loads between network interfaces. In order to preserve the transmission order of packets, classical load balancers generally assign client connections to network interfaces. Various parameters may change, however, after assigning clients to these network interfaces. For example, the speed of the physical media interface may dynamically change. The client traffic intensity/flow rate may similarly change.
Such changes cause performance degradation because of a lack of an optimization method that considers these dynamic changes. Furthermore, handling these parameters without the dynamic changes is non-trivial. While transmitting load balancing solutions exist, they do not support mixed speeds proportional load balancing. A common load balancer generally assumes that it is using an equal capabilities lower interface. As such, the necessity for a design that is adaptive to the above-described changes is critical toward providing a high performance solution for mixed speed network interfaces.